No Point Of Reference

Recently I’ve been attempting to teach my offspring to ride a bike. Let me just say it right now, I have no freaking clue what I’m doing. I have no point of reference at all because I don’t know how to ride a bike. I know it’s hard to believe as learning to ride a bike seems to be a rite of childhood, but honestly, it never happened for me. I want to know how to ride a bike, I just don’t and now that I’m 35 I’m not sure I’m really up to falling off a bike and the embarrassment that ensues (i.e. I’m a big pussy). But I digress (as usual), I’ve done bike maintenance (aired up tires, replaced a tire tube and oiled chains) and now I’m kind of not sure what the hell I’m doing. So far, I’m running along side my progeny, holding them steady then suddenly letting go and watching them fall over. Which to be honest seems like a big nasty life lesson in trust and all that crap more than anything else. I’m not sure my kids are learning much more than that the ground really hurts when you fall onto it and sometimes you bleed, but they seem to be up for more, so whatever. Eventually they’ll either learn to ride or get tired of falling over.

This past weekend was crazy. Instead of my usual paying gig of watching Coco the colorful pooch, I got to watch Coco and Coco’s brother Alec (who looks nothing like Coco, but more like a big ass rottie German shepherd mix) at Alec’s daddy’s house. Therefore, I was gone ALL weekend long. The Little People were thrilled as this casa has a pool and a hot tub (which was totally necessary as the pool was really COLD, so they’d swim in the pool for a bit, then jump in the hot tub to warm up and back to the pool ad nauseam). It seems like it would be fantastically exciting to be spending the weekend in a big ass house with a pool and hot tub and endless channels of television to watch and wireless internet. However, it wasn’t. The pool got boring after a bit. There is only so much ‘keep away’ one can play with one’s progeny. The cable got boring right away and K and I only had one computer between us so we both tried to limit our own computer usage so as to be courteous to the other. And most of the time I was there I was thinking of the millions of things I needed to be doing back at my house that weren’t getting done because the cats just don’t do ANYTHING at all. It was somewhat stressful. But what do I know; I might have had more fun if I’d just drank heavily.

Moreover, on to other things…

Cabbage Patch has distinguished herself by being able to fail kindergarten. We just got her final progress report that basically says that she’s failing EVERYTHING and they suggest summer school. K and I have discussed this and we are opting to not put her in summer school and just have her repeat kindergarten. When I enrolled her in kindergarten, I wondered if I was putting her in to early as she is a July birthday and now it seems as though I have my confirmation that I should have waited. Even though I know this, I can’t help but feel like an enormous failure as a mother in this department. Yay me.

And to add to that failure in the motherhood department, Super Girl is having issues with school also. This is the most frustrating part ever. Super Girl’s teacher has been telling us that she knows the information but that she isn’t doing well on the tests. What the hell can you do? She HAS to pass the tests to pass 2nd grade. When we go over the flash cards with her, she knows it. She knows the math problems, she knows the words, and she can read well. She’s still failing the tests. Part of the problem is the way the tests are being administered. The math portion is done on the computer where the child is shown the screen with the math problem (8+1=) and they have to verbally answer in 3 seconds. There in lies the problem, the three seconds. When she gets to one she has to think about (8+7=) she takes longer than 3 seconds, then she ends up missing the next 2 because she’s trying to catch up. *sigh* I’m going to call the teacher and see what can be done about this, if she can just take the test in written form.

This whole school year has been rather disappointing and frustrating for me, as there seems to be a great lack of communication from the teachers as to what and how the progeny have been doing academically. So there, one child is definitely failing and the other is teetering on the edge – I think I definitely have the up on Britney Spears in this Ghetto Mother Of The Year Award and I didn’t even have to get one of them addicted to crack.

Finally…

I’ve been spending most of my time applying for jobs, washing clothes, cleaning my kitchen and being depressed. Some days I spend more of my time being depressed than anything else and those are the days that I generally don’t do the washing of clothes or cleaning of the kitchen and spend a lot of time just sleeping to make the day end faster. The past year and a half has been rather depressing but fuck, until a couple of months ago, I didn’t have the overwhelming urge to spend 12-14 hours a day sleeping.

I’ve never been unemployed for this long and quite frankly, it’s horrible. I’ve worked since I was 15 and worked full time since I graduated high school – even when I was in college. I never realized how much of my worth was tied to getting a paycheck until now. I honestly feel somewhat useless and worthless because I’m not getting a paycheck. This of course makes me full of self-doubt and devoid of motivation. It’s bad enough that I procrastinate but now I feel absolutely anxious when I want to do something because I’m terrified it won’t be good enough. I’ve always been somewhat doubtful about my own talents – I never really got many ‘at-a-boys’ growing up or much in the way of encouragement, but now, well I’m just paralyzed by it. I’m disappointed in myself, I feel like I should be able to snap out of this but I can’t seem to. I know I’ve disappointed a lot of people, join the club, I’m sure there are jackets by now. I’m sorry, I’m not a very good friend right now and I honestly don’t expect people to understand or anything like that. Therefore, if I’ve let you down and angered you, I completely understand and wouldn’t expect you to feel any other way. I’m sorry, I can’t change how I’ve been and though I’d like to promise you that I’ll wake up tomorrow and things will be wonderful and I’ll be able to fulfill my obligations and promises, I just can’t make that promise, I very well make wake up tomorrow and have the urge to go back to sleep for another 5 hours. I lead a glamorous life, don’t I?

On a brighter note, I have had two pretty decent job leads come up today and tomorrow I’m going to apply for a few jobs. Blah, that’s it for now. Send well wishes… and Prozac… and money… kidding, kidding, just send Prozac. ;)